Thinkin' bout... sea squirts

Thinkin' bout a relationship between a human and an alien with a similar life cycle.

What if an Earther and an alien fell in love, and the hormonal changes in the alien made it start digesting its own nervous system/brain because its body thinks "Oh, cool, we're entering the reproductive end-stage of our life, don't need THIS anymore!"

And maybe there were meds available to stop it (alien is from an advanced, space-faring civ, after all, this would just be their version of birth control), but it would also stop any feelings the alien had for its human partner.

So maybe, aboard the L.I.T. Easy Tiger, there is an Earther crew member an an alien crew member, and they used to have A Thing, but then PILLS, and now alien has shit short-term memory and tremor and sleeps a ton, and thinks human is, y'know, OK, but nothing to get excited over.

I have a million things I should be doing and thinking about this is not one of them